A judge told Sarasota County it can't wall off rural land from the Live Local Act
A Sarasota circuit judge has ruled that the county cannot categorically exclude its rural land from Florida's Live Local Act, and ordered it to process D.R. Horton's application for 864 apartments near the Celery Fields. The ruling is one case about one farm — and the latest evidence that Florida's growth decisions are migrating to Tallahassee, by law and, after Tuesday's vote, by wallet. Machinery like that outlives the people who built it, which makes who holds it next worth some care.
- Circuit Judge Hunter Carroll on Nov. 4 denied Sarasota County's motion to dismiss D.R. Horton's lawsuit and ordered the county to process the application for 864 apartments on the Smith farm on Raymond Road, near the Celery Fields — 50.85 acres zoned Open Use Rural.
- The county commission decided in April that rural and open-use land doesn't qualify under the Live Local Act. Carroll ruled it can: the county's own code allows some commercial and industrial uses in that district, so the land counts as mixed-use under the state law. The Attorney General's office said much the same in a Sept. 16 opinion.
- The judge's own framing: 'The act's displacement of the county's zoning hierarchy is not a flaw in interpretation; it is the very design the legislature chose.' The order does NOT approve the project — the county can still apply every rule the state law doesn't preempt.
- The wider pattern, worth noticing: Live Local (2023) moved zoning decisions to Tallahassee by statute; Amendment 3, passed Tuesday, tightens local budgets by constitutional amendment. Decisions are migrating to the state capital by law and by wallet alike — and structures like that are inherited by whoever comes next.
A farm on Raymond Road, next to one of Florida's best-known birding spots, just became the place where a judge explained how Florida now works. D.R. Horton wants to build 864 apartments on the Smith farm near the Celery Fields — 50.85 acres zoned Open Use Rural. Sarasota County's commissioners decided in April that rural and open-use land simply doesn't qualify under the state's Live Local Act, and the county refused the application on that basis. Horton sued in June. On Wednesday, Circuit Judge Hunter Carroll denied the county's motion to dismiss and ordered it to process the application.
The law at the center of it is the Live Local Act of 2023 — Tallahassee's affordable-housing override. Where land is zoned commercial, industrial or mixed-use, a developer who keeps at least 40% of units affordable at up to 120% of area median income, for at least 30 years, gets administrative approval: no rezoning fight, no hearing where a commission can kill the project. Sarasota's theory was that its rural district stood outside that scheme. Carroll's answer was in the county's own code: because the Open Use Rural district already permits some commercial and industrial uses, the land counts as mixed-use under the Act. The state Attorney General's office had reached the same reading in a September 16 opinion. 'The act's displacement of the county's zoning hierarchy is not a flaw in interpretation,' Carroll wrote. 'It is the very design the legislature chose.' Two limits matter: the order does not approve the 864 units — the county may still apply every rule the Act doesn't preempt — and the county had already turned down a settlement offer of 126 single-family homes on the site.
It is worth stepping back from the one farm, because this ruling did not arrive alone. In 2023, the Legislature moved a large share of Florida's growth decisions to Tallahassee by statute. On Tuesday, the voters tightened the other end: Amendment 3, a constitutional amendment, squeezes the property-tax base that is the one major revenue county and city governments control themselves. Miami-Dade's version of that vote, covered on this page yesterday, was widely read as a message — tighten your belt. Messages are read once. Structures stay. A statute can be repealed by a future legislature; a constitutional amendment takes another 60% statewide vote to undo.
None of that makes either decision wrong — the housing shortage Live Local aims at is real, and so is the bloat Amendment 3's voters were aiming at. But it does describe an apparatus being assembled, piece by piece, in which more of Florida's decisions get made in one city, by whoever holds power there. The builders of that apparatus leave office in January. What they built does not. A protest vote sent to deliver a message can end up changing a great deal more than the message — and the longer these levers exist, the more the important question becomes the oldest one: how much care we take over who we put in a position to pull them next.